Apparently our population almost doubled yesterday when the AMGEN Tour came here. It's the first time they've come through the north county, and it was a big deal for our little town. The kids got off school early, since half the roads were closed.
I wasn't really planning on going (I usually try to avoid big crowds when it's just me and the boys), but the school got our kids all excited about it. In fact Spencer's teacher has been showing the class footage of the race all week. Then I found out that it would be entering our town about a block or two from our house. So that definitely sounded do-able. I woke Brennan up early from his nap and put him in the stroller while the other boys rode bikes and scooters. We got there an hour early, since we didn't know exactly when they were coming, and we got front row seats right at the turn, giving us a great view and forcing the riders to slow down at least a tad so we could see them even better.
I was a little concerned about boredom, waiting for an hour with nothing to do, but then some lady drove by handing out free boxes of yellow chalk for people to decorate the streets and sidewalks for the Lance Armstrong foundation.
We were all pretty much covered in yellow from head to toe by the time the bikers arrived. The excitement grew as more people gathered and tons of police cars and motorcycles and photo cars and helicopters arrived.
Here's the lead group. Yesterday's race was the longest stage at 134.3 miles, and the winner did it in 5 hours 7 1/2 minutes. Lance came in 19th and remains in 4th place overall.
There was a short gap, and then the main group sped by. There were
tons of them, and they were going so fast around that turn. I thought they would have been more spread out than that. It looked like it was over and people were starting to leave when 2 more stragglers went by, and everyone cheered the loudest for them. The whole thing was very exciting, and it was cool to think that the fastest bikers in the world were right here in our little town.
Apparently our population almost doubled yesterday when the AMGEN Tour came here. It's the first time they've come through the north county, and it was a big deal for our little town. The kids got off school early, since half the roads were closed.
Here's the lead group. Yesterday's race was the longest stage at 134.3 miles, and the winner did it in 5 hours 7 1/2 minutes. Lance came in 19th and remains in 4th place overall. 
1 comment:
Wow, what a cool event. Actually I never heard of AMGEN before, but it's obviously a big deal. How cool that you guys could go see--and contribute, if you consider all the chalk drawing.
Post a Comment